Police Policies Database

Following the 2018 police shooting of E.J. Bradford, Jr., a Black man killed by a police officer in Hoover, the ACLU of Alabama and Alabama NAACP jointly filed public records requests in six Alabama jurisdictions: Birmingham, Hoover, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, and Saraland.

We asked for their use-of-force policies, body cam policies, and racial bias training materials. As of March 2019, we have only received some of the Hoover and Saraland Police Department policies, and we have received notices from the Birmingham and Montgomery Police Departments that they are preparing to send theirs. We will continue to update this page as we collect more documents.

The excessive and oftentimes lethal force by law enforcement towards Black and Brown people is an epidemic in this country, and we must take pro-active steps to change the internal cultures of police departments. To that end, these documents are being collected so that all community members can be aware of their police department's policies are currently, and so that we can advocate for reform of those policies when they are deficient or outdated. It is imperative that Alabama law enforcement be held to high standards of openness and transparency that we should expect from all levels of government.